by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/08/18 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/08/18/8875948.aspx
From Ben Kuchera's A crumbling tower: Sony lays siege to the 360's weak spots:
Find a home in the world
We tend to focus on US sales, because we live in the US. But gaming is an international business, and Microsoft has seen almost all of its success in the US. Both Nintendo and Sony do very good business in Japan and Europe, while Microsoft has always struggled in those markets. Heck, in Japan, the big story is the sales of Sony's PSP.
Microsoft depends on US sales, and while the system sees spikes in other territories when there is a launch of specific, big-name titles, it tends to flounder otherwise. It's hard to think of a way for Microsoft to make in-roads in Japan, but Europe has to be seen as a major battleground. Both Nintendo and Sony have multiple systems that are doing bang-up business across the globe. Microsoft has one system that does well in one market. It might be too late for Microsoft to grab a piece of the portable business, and the Zune is hardly an opportunity in that area, so Redmond is left with one option: the 360 simply has to step it up outside of the US.
Now this is an agenda item that I never am against, even on the busiest of days here at SIAO. :-)
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